Real Steel

It is not often that a movie impresses me with its sheer chutzpah in taking three previously made stories and combining them into a new film. This is what the film Real Steel has done and it works amazingly well. Take The Champ, about a boxer and his son, and the complete plot of Rocky, mix with the episode Steel from the Twilight Zone about a robot boxer, stir well and out pops Real Steel.

When I first saw a trailer for Real Steel all I could think was, "They made a movie about Rock 'em, Sock 'em Robots?" The Real Steel robots are more advanced than that, however if you look closely during the junkyard scene you will see a head that looks suspiciously like an oversized Rock'em, Sock'em Robot head.

There are no surprises in Real Steal. What impressed me most was the boxing. It wasn't machine against machine anything goes, it was real boxing choreographed with the help of "Sugar Ray" Leonard and perhaps that's what made it fun for me to watch.